The Land Question and the Rural Poor

Published:Pravda TrudaNo. 3, September 13, 1913.

      Signed:V. Ilyin.

      Published according to thePravda Trudatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages376-378.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Apaper on this important subject was read by Minin, a
Chernigov agronomist, at the All-Russian Agricultural Congress on
September 3 in Kiev.

Mr.Minin,apparently a Narodnik (who agreed, incidentally, with the
bourgeois professor Kosinsky on the viability of “family” farming),
demonstrated in all justice that agronomy helps the affluent peasant. The
agrarian regulations help the strong and ruin the poor. They are a chariot
in which the strong sit and crush the defeated.

Therecan be no doubt that this is an absolute truth. Only people
without a conscience could deny it. But in what does Mr. Minin see
“salvation”?

Hesaid (according to the report inKievskaya MyslNo. 244):

“Theonly thing that will save the smallest farms after
   the re allocation is for them to form themselves into voluntary
   co-operatives for the joint exploitation (collective tilling) of their own
   land.”

“Theonly thing that will save the smallest farms after
   the re allocation is for them to form themselves into voluntary
   co-operatives for the joint exploitation (collective tilling) of their own
   land.”

Obviously,this Narodnik remedy is simply childish. The landowners and
kulaks are driving millions of peasants from the land and ruining millions
more. World capitalism as a whole, the entire power of international
commerce, the might of capital to the tune of thousands of millions in the
hands of the bourgeoisie of all countries are pulling Russia along with
them, sustaining and supporting her bourgeoisie in the towns and in thecountryside, including those within the village communes. And now
we are told that the collective tilling of “their own scraps of land” by
ruined peasants is “salvation”!  This is like trying to beat a railway
train with a wheelbarrow—in speed and carrying capacity.

Itwon’t work, my Narodnik gentlemen! You are right, of course, when
you say that the railway train is crushing the poor, but wheelbarrows are
not what yow should be thinking about.

Notbackward from the train to the wheelbarrow, but onward from the
capitalist train to that of the united proletarians.

Theinnocent dreams of the Narodniks are not only childishly na\"ive,
they are actually harmful because they divert the minds of the poor from
the class struggle. There is no salvation for the rural pooroutsidethe class struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie for the reconstruction of the entire capitalist system. All
these unions, co-operatives, associations, etc., can only be of use if they
participate consciously in that class struggle.

Althoughit is beyond all shadow of doubt that the development of
capitalism and the proletarianisation of the countryside must inevitably
continue in Russia, as in the rest of the world, it would be the greatest
mistake to con fine oneself to this truth.

Thereare various kinds of capitalism—the semi-feudal capitalism of
the landowners with its host of residual privileges, which is the most
reactionary and causes the masses the greatest suffering; there is also the
capitalism of free farmers, which is the most democratic, causes the masses
less suffering and has fewer residual privileges.

Whatinfluence, for example, would the transfer of all the land to the
peasants without compensation have on the development of capitalism in
Russia? That would not be socialism. That would also be capitalism, yet it
would not be Purishkevich-Guchkov but democratic, Narodnik-peasant
capitalism. The development of capitalism would proceed more rapidly, more
extensively, more freely and with less suffering for the masses.

Thatis thereal substanceof the present, existing agrarian
problem in Russia. That is what the advocates of land owners’ solution of
the land question and bourgeois agronomy on the one hand, and the Narodniks
and Left Cadets (such as Shakhovskoi) on the other, were arguing about in
Kiev (without understanding the substance of the issue). They were arguing
about whether bourgeois democratsshould leave the Purishkeviches to complete the organisation of the new
Russia on feudal-capitalist lines, or whether they should take that
organisation into their own hands, into the hands of the masses, into the
hands of the peasants, and continue it without the Purishkeviches on free,
democratic, capitalist lines.

Itis not difficult to understand the position of the politically
conscious worker on this issue. We know perfectly well that both the
Stolypin path of development and that of the Narodniks mean the development
of capitalism, which will in any case lead to the triumph of the
proletariat. We shall not lose heart, no matter which turn history
takes. But we shall not, allow history to take any turn without our
participation, without the active intervention of the advanced class. The
working class is not indifferent to the clashes between the Purishkeviches
and the peasant democrats; its attitude is one of heartiest, most devoted
defence of the interests of peasant democracy and democracy for the entire
people in their most consistent form.

Notthe least concession to the alleged socialism (but actually
petty-bourgeois dreaming) of the Narodniks, which is rotten through and
through, but the greatest attention to the peasant democrats, to their
education, to awakening and rallying them, to liberating them from every
kind of stifling prejudice—such is the line taken by the politically
conscious worker.

Doyou want to dream of the victory of the wheelbarrow over, the train?
Then your way is not ours, we are the enemies of banal
Manilovism.[1]Do you want to fight against the Purishkeviches? Then
your way is ours, but remember that the workers will not forgive the
slightest vacillation.

Butthe working class treats those who, in obsequious haste, declare
the “complete” success of Stolypin’s solution of the land question with
the contempt that advanced, strong classes hostile to reformism always
display towards opportunists and towards the knights of transient success.

[1]Manilov—a character from Gogol’sDead Souls, a
chatterbox and empty day-dreamer whose name has become a synonym for the
passive, easy-going attitude to reality typical of such characters.